


More and More Exciting Muggle Music

by PaulaMcG



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: 1976, Concerts, Divergent Timelines, Drinking, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Kissing, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Marauders Friendship (Harry Potter), Multi, Queen - Freeform, Quidditch, Stag Nights & Bachelor Parties, career decisions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:53:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22722010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaulaMcG/pseuds/PaulaMcG
Summary: In September after leaving Hogwarts, James participates in a Quidditch mate’s stag do, arguing about girls and music, and goes to a Queen concert with his best friends, wondering if he should worry or offer help.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	More and More Exciting Muggle Music

**Author's Note:**

> James and his friends will never help me make any money. I follow only the canon of Rowling’s first five novels, and my Marauders left Hogwarts in 1976.

Blood spurts onto my upper lip. The stroke on my nose is followed by such a strong one against my knees that the broomstick between them starts to wobble, then to plummet.

I make the most of the dramatic dive. Instead of straightening and stabilising the broom, I guide it to a couple of somersaults. Having gained full control, I pretend to nearly fall off. Now I’m holding on with my left hand and left foot in a Starfish and Stick position. And when I let the broom still levitate close to the ground, I grab the stick with the other hand, too, and turn to stare at the starry sky. Finally I lower myself so that my back touches heather comfortably enough.

“Did I kill you?” Gideon lands next to me. No, it’s Fabian. He’s now lit his wand so as to examine me, and in its light I discern the scar on his cheek.

His twin with an otherwise identical head – the round pale face and orange mop – and an identical voice has arrived on my other side. “Fab, did you pull off the Transylvanian Tackle?”

“No, he didn’t,” I mumble, spitting blood, and with my nose blocked. “T’was no fake punch.”

“Sorry, mate!” Fabian spreads his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Didn’t see quite where your nose was.”

That’s been the fun of it. Playing Quidditch at a new-moon night in the middle of moorland. No rebellion in it: following the rules to prevent Muggles from spotting us. But when we all rely on our other senses, my shortsightedness doesn’t put me at a disadvantage.

Gideon has now aimed his wand at me, and I trust him to stem the bleeding without side-effects. I feel only tickling, and can’t help laughing. It’s been a great night, an escapade from my London life after a sweltering summer, and I feel alive.

Keep yourself alive! And… You make me live. That’s her, and another song from her record player now stuck on my mind. You’re my best friend. Is she, or…? 

“Catch it!” The high voice is Benjy’s. He’s shouting to Caradoc, who whizzes above me, grabbing our Bludger.

Now they’re all sprawled around me, panting and chuckling. Caradoc’s holding the Bludger against the ground under his broad muscular chest.

That’s how I remember his enviable ripped torso from the Hogwarts changing rooms, where Benjy and I, for several years the two youngest, used to fool around, flexing our negligible biceps. Then Frank was gone, a year later the Prewett twins and Caradoc left, and finally Benjy, and I was the last one of the old Gryffindor team.

As Benjy’s ordered an end to this blind play, a mockery of our champion games, it’s obvious he wants us to proceed to the next surprise we’ve planned for his stag do. He’s sitting up and holding the case between his legs, now opening it and returning the Quaffle to its place next to the Snitch and the other Bludger, which we haven’t used since we’re only five.

After he’s strapped in the Bludger held by Caradoc, his thin face seems to shine in expectation, as his eyes under the thick black brows flick from mate to mate. He still looks like a little schoolboy, and it’s hard to believe he’s getting married. He and his fiancée don’t want to and don’t have to wait; they’re both going to simply work in his father’s Hogsmeade shop.

“What now?” Gideon asks, moving his wand smoothly in front of my mouth.

He’s performed a voiceless Scouring Charm. I can taste the bubbles on my lips, and Caradoc lets out a cackle.

“Thank you. You could become a cleaner as well as a healer.” Sometimes it irks me how he’s still – after he and Fabian have trained at St Mungo’s for two years – too enthusiastic about his chosen field to let us ever forget it. “What does the health expert say: am I well enough – and aren’t we too pissed yet for Apparating?”

We’ve all managed to Apparate to Diagon Alley without losing a limb. Stumbling on each other’s broomsticks, we’re making quite a racket to echo on the closed-up shopfronts.

“Wonder what Frank would’ve thought about our playing.” Caradoc’s still guffawing.

“Pity he’s too busy with real, professional practice.” The heavy ball case slips from Benjy’s hands, and he starts levitating it. “But he’s promised not to miss the wedding.”

“Trust our Quidditch hero to let the Montrose Magpies make him miss his own wedding!” That’s Fabian, snorting.

“He’s not marrying yet. Just started dating Alice.” That sounded too serious, but I won’t let slip out more about the topic. “Firewhisky? I’ll get a round in.” I’m already striding towards the Leaky Cauldron.

I need a drink, and I’m not in the mood for Muggle booze now. Fortunately Tom’s got so many nocturnal creatures as clients that he keeps the pub open even after midnight.

There he is, standing behind the bar, wiping a goblet with a grey rag, perhaps trying to make it as shiny as his bald head. I get ever more thirsty when I see a bottle of Ogden’s Old on the counter and an empty glass at Tom’s elbow.

While the others are edging their way to a corner table, I march to Tom, nod and grin my greeting, point at the bottle, and lift five fingers. “And one for yourself.”

He actually fills his own glass first, before Summoning five others to the counter. “Ta, young stag!” he mutters, startling me before I realise he’s not referring to my Animagus form. “Not your own party?”

“No, it’s Benjy who’s getting married.”

“Fenwick? He’s come of age?” Tom’s pouring whisky carefully up to the very rim of each glass.

I only nod when he glances at me, and place a couple of Galleons on the counter.

“You, propose to that lassie, the redhead! All right?” He shoves the change towards me but lifts his hand from it, winking, only when I nod again.

“I will.” As if I hadn’t done it, kept doing it for months, since before we left school. Of course I will in any case, again and again if I need to.

Levitating the glasses in front of me, I navigate towards the raucous mob of stags. There’re goblin patrons staring gloomily into their smoking goblets, and a group of wizards, who’ve charmed their bottles to dance to their singing and to tilt above their mouths after every verse. 

“Muggle-born girls have all those modern ideas,” Fabian’s saying. “Don’t want to become just wives.”

“Alice is not Muggle-born,” Benjy replies.

“Are we talking about Frank’s girlfriend?” Gideon notices my approach and points his wand at one of the glasses and Summons it with a voiceless spell. “If we are, tell me why?”

No, I’m afraid they’re talking about Lily.

“If we are, it’s because Frank’s girlfriend has got some ideas from her Muggle-born dormmate,” Fabian tells his brother – or perhaps me.

“No, Alice got the idea from Sirius and me,” I cut in.

The other four Firewhiskies have landed on the table, and Caradoc grabs one immediately, but hastens to ask, turning to me, before taking a swig, “Is it true she applied for the Auror training?”

Benjy is quicker to answer. “Yes, and she’ll apply again next year. I’ve heard her say she doesn’t mind if it takes several years before she finishes her training, and she’ll share a flat with her best friend.”

And that’s Lily, who’s got and kept ideas of her own.

“Evans?” Caradoc has kept looking at me. “She is your girlfriend now, right?” 

“Since spring last year,” Benjy confirms. “And they’ll marry when they’re ready.”

“James has been ready since he was twelve,” Fabian quips between gulps of whisky.

Compared with the burn of the Firewhisky in my throat, I feel I’m managing to keep my cool in the rest of myself. “Sirius and I don’t mind sharing his flat while we’re Auror trainees. You know we’ve really been like brothers after my parents said their house was his home, too.”

“And now you’ve been in London since leaving Hogwarts?” Caradoc asks.

“Yeah. Just some weeks in Brighton.” No, I won’t mention that mum and dad – our parents, I could say – insisted on a seaside holiday together. “You know, we found a motorbike for Sirius down there.”

But no Muggle gadgets – perhaps nothing, really, besides Quidditch – could interest them enough to now distract them from the topic of girls.

“They’ve given some great parties in that Muggle flat, I hear.” Caradoc, settled with his little wife in Hogsmeade, wouldn’t have attended. 

“Yeah, a big one just before you got back, Jamie, I think.” Fabian says. “You weren’t there.”

Gideon chortles into his drink. “You mean the time when you, with your serious intentions, tried to seduce the only serious girl, the one that wasn’t flirting.”

“Bones, yes. And she escaped.” Fabian admits failure. “Too serious, bound to stay an eternal virgin.”

“No, she was dating before anyone else,” Benjy testifies. “Went to dates in the woods, too, even in the Forbidden Forest, so surely not a virgin.”

I don’t want them to go on and talk about Remus, too. His failed or perhaps just unorthodox dating before he and Sirius… “My girlfriend and the others who don’t want to marry yet are just serious about their careers and about having fun together with us.”

“That’s right.” Gideon gets up. “Who wants another? They have the best music at their parties.”

Heading to the bar, he punches me on the shoulder, just when I’m gratefully grabbing the thread he’s offered. “Yes, collections of songs recorded on those disks. You can listen to them whenever you want.”

“Waiting for the weekly programme on the Wizarding Wireless can’t beat that.” Benjy sighs, but perks up immediately. “But we have concerts at the Broomsticks every two weeks. Almost every month there’s something good, like Fireballs. We get to see the bands play. That beats any recording.”

“D’you think there’re no concerts in Muggle London?” Almost immediately I regret jeering at my sincere mate, and I go on, offering information, “In a couple of weeks the best band ever gives a free concert in Hyde Park.”

“The best? Says who?” That’s Fabian. “The Blast-Ended Boys are the best.”

“No way!” his twin shouts, approaching with drinks in front of him. “Brotherhood of Boggarts!”

And Benjy screams, lifting his empty glass as if for a toast, “Fireballs!”

“The Who!” it occurs to me to yell, louder, even though that’s only Peter’s favourite, and I’ll let him know next time I see him.

This helps the shouting match heat up and make them all forget any earlier topic. 

“Perhaps. I should listen to them, too,” Remus replies to Peter. “But Queen are the best I know so far.”

The two of them are walking side by side, as Peter’s leading our way towards Hyde Park. We couldn’t possibly go astray in this stream of young Muggles, but he likes to demonstrate that he’s the one in our gang with the most experience about the non-magical side of the capital.

During Peter’s rave about the Who, I’ve been slowed down a bit by holding my arm around Lily’s waist, but I can see clearly enough Remus’s tender and concerned expression when he glances back at Sirius just behind him. Poor Padfoot! His Moony understands perhaps even better than I do why he feels uncomfortable in crowds and would rather resort to his dog form.

“How well can you know any queen?” Sirius asks, clearly trying his best to sound relaxed and playful.

“Lily’s invited me a couple of times,” Remus starts his explanation, “to help her and Alice arrange pictures on their walls and such, choose curtains…”

“Of course, you’re the expert in interior decoration,” Peter cuts in sarcastically. “We can see that in your rented room.”

That’s a bit mean, but Remus only smiles. “In there I’ve got a special minimalistic style. Anyway, I’ve got to hear Sheer Heart Attack and A Night at the Opera before, and now while we were making the picnic sandwiches, we prepared ourselves also by listening to my favourite songs again.”

Sometimes I wonder if Remus gets to spend more time in that flat than I do. It doesn’t make any sense to be jealous.

Besides, I still believe that he should be sharing Sirius’s flat instead of me. I’ve asked each of them separately but find it hard to accept the answers.

Remus says he wants to be independent. Sirius hardly offers any proper reasons at all, just reminds me that after he stayed at my parents’, it was my turn to move to his place. When he first asked me, right after he bought the flat at the end of our sixth year, and suggested that I move in as soon as for that summer, by agreeing I wanted to show that I’d finally – later than Remus himself – fully forgiven him for the Willow Incident. Peter says – even though nobody has asked him – that it’s all right for me to share with my “brother” because I’m as good as engaged.

At the moment I feel I am. We’ve arrived at the shores of the Serpentine lake early enough to be able to continue close to the huge yellow structure raised over the stage. Here we sit down on the lawn to wait, and Lily settles almost in my lap. The evening sun is as gentle as she is today, and for once she doesn’t pull her hand away from mine, blaming the heat for making our hands too sweaty and swollen. Or does she?

No, she lets my hand go, but comes only closer. She gets up on her knees and leans against my chest, reaching to open the bag still on my back. And having dealt out the sandwiches and beer cans, she starts feeding a sandwich to me.

“Here you are, my deer!” she says tenderly, offering a piece of sandwich on her open palm.

I bend my head so as to take the piece with my lips, as if I had a muzzle, and I both kiss and lick her soft skin, and she laughs. 

“You…” I say.

Unlike through all the school years when I was the famous chaser of not only the Quaffle but of the most gorgeous and brilliant Gryffindor lady, I feel free not to compose witty words of courtship. I just keep staring at her hair, which glows ever more fiery in the sunset, and at the dimple on her cheek, at the golden freckles – on her arms, too, left bare by her skimpy dress – and her eyes like jewels.

“You look very beautiful.”

As simple as that, my words earn me a kiss full on the mouth.

I realise that I’ve been more worried ever since Gideon implied that Lily, too, would flirt with others. Now at least she only has eyes for me.

Until Freddie, Bryan, John and Roger – as she likes to call them – appear in the smoke and coloured lights. It suddenly occurs to me that she compares the four of us with the band and perhaps even wishes we were more like them, even though they are mere Muggles.

In the darkened park we’ve jumped to our feet and been rocked by the thunderous opening. Lily’s staring fixedly at the stage. And now the singer with his dramatic gestures has shed the loose overalls, which have not revealed more of his figure than a wizard would find decent. He’s suddenly half-naked. 

His speaking voice, too, is mesmerising even in my ears, and he flirts with the audience. “You all look very beautiful, I must say. You and you.”

But my Lily presses against me, squeezes my hand and reaches to shout close to my ear, “As if he’d heard what you just said.” She kisses me on the chin, which is where I got my very first kiss from her in our sixth year. “He must mean me and you.”

And I know that this is a most spectacular, lovely event to share with my best friends.

I want to check that they all enjoy it as much. Before glancing to my other side, I’m alarmed to feel that Sirius next to me is shaking. But he’s just moving his head, then gradually his whole body to the rhythm of the music. He’s listening intently and, perhaps impatiently, starting to try and follow the song with his voice.

This crazy ambition of his to learn to sing is both Lily’s and Remus’s fault. Lily’s introduced more and more exciting Muggle music to him, after Remus first made him realise he’s a good listener and able to imitate birds by whistling. I don’t think I, in turn, have done anything to deserve the torment of his relentless practising in the flat. At the moment I can’t hear his contribution too clearly, and I’m only glad that the genius musicians can help him forget his discomfort caused by accidental touches of strangers in the heaving crowd around us. 

When the dangerously charismatic singer, talking into the device at the end of the long, gleaming metal stick he’s carrying, announces a softer, quiet little number for all the delicate little people out here tonight, I can’t help wondering which one of us five that description could best apply to. None of us would like to admit belonging to such people, but I assume we all do – with perhaps Lily as the only exception.

Oh, so sad, these lyrics. Lily and I hold each other tight, and I’m overjoyed, yes. There isn’t any sadness for the two of us, not even in my indeterminate wait for our wedding. I look around so as to live and store in memory this sweet moment, experienced through all my senses.

Now I notice that – as I should have guessed – Peter’s pushed to stand between Remus and Sirius. As if the public situation weren’t enough to stop the two of them from any such tender gestures as Lily’s and mine. He’s making faces, ridiculing the emotion in the beautiful slow song, and trying to catch their attention.

I can see Remus peering around him, seeking eye contact with – or at least a glimpse of – his Padfoot. Catching only Peter’s eye, he gives a small smirk. But suddenly he’s turning towards the stage, inching forward and standing straighter, fully alert. 

This next song must be one of Remus’s favourites. And it’s not a happy song. He’s almost in my line of vision, and I continue to look at him more than at the stage. I can see if not quite hear him sing along, and for the first time I pay proper attention to the lyrics, to some lines in particular, as singing them triggers tears in his eyes.

Freddie’s angry voice becomes our Moony’s. “… You’ve been had… Prostitue yourself… Castrate your human pride!”

At the end of the song he’s breathing hard.

Sirius steps in front of Peter and bends close to Remus, and immediately after turns to shout in my ear. “He flicks more than his wrist. That stick’s his wand.”

“Yeah, he must be a wizard,” I shout back, wondering if he said the same thing to Remus, and hoping that he just kissed his ear instead, and only pretended to want to say something to both of us.

“Love his wink, and the way he conveyed that message.” That’s Lily’s voice in my other ear, and as I turn to her, confused, she continues, “From the constabulary. Not to throw tin cans.”

I can feel her happy sigh against my chest when our song starts.

“Ooh, you make me live.”

They’ve all been my best friends, and now she’s one of them while being even more, the one who’ll one day be my wife and mother to my children. But not being more mine in such a sense that she wouldn’t have the same right to choose what to study and where to work. She’s chosen the career of a Curse Breaker and I’m only glad for her that now she’s both got a job at the Ministry and started Oxford courses.

“In rain or shine/ You’ve stood by me girl/ … my best friend… ”

Expecting the words about this world being cruel to me, I realise that this song, too, is more poignant to Remus and Sirius. And in this medley, the song is interrupted by the dramatic one I’ve heard Remus sing, even explaining that he feels it’s about him facing the truth about Dumbledore’s plans for him. 

He’s got no right to choose. He’ll study only Defence against Dark Creatures and only as the scholars’ experiment on one such creature. He’s hardly got any chance for employment, just a meagre grant to live on.

“Body’s aching all the time… I sometimes wish I’d never been born at all.”

No, he doesn’t wish that. He doesn’t even say such a thing, not even to his best friends, except in a song. He doesn’t ever hint at us being more fortunate, even though he’s not legally human, and even his love is illegal.

We’ve learnt to ease his pain, and the three of us will be there for him again as the full moon rises on the evening after tomorrow. And Sirius has wanted to change for him more than anyone else, even beyond becoming an Animagus and adopting an animal form surprisingly similar to his. Perhaps the two of them do help each other more than I can comprehend.

I’ve done my best to make it clear that I give my full support to their becoming a couple, even though I’ve found it hard not to be jealous of the Marauder mate whom I admired most from the very beginning and whom I was proud to name my brother. I know there’s something he’s hidden behind his self-assured and rebellious behaviour, something worse than not being attracted to girls. He was abused in his parents’ house, and in ways which he can’t bear to talk about, not much even to Remus. That can make it harder for him to live with whom he loves – in the magical or in the Muggle world, which are both cruel to them.

I should find new ways to help these friends, who don’t admit they need it. Is it enough to just share good times like this with them, aware of but not mentioning fears and frustrations we all have?

Something hits the back of my head. A beer can? I shift to stand behind Lily, with my both arms wrapped protectively around her, and only twist my neck to see who’s attacking.

The can is in the hand of a grinning redhead, and another bloke with an almost identical face is elbowing his way through the crowd to reach our gang.

“You were right,” Fabian shouts through the guitar solo of The March of the Black Queen, lifting his can for a toast.

And Gideon confirms, “No blasted balls can beat these queens.”

**Author's Note:**

> The latter half of this story takes place against the background of the free concert given by Queen in Hyde Park on the 18th of September 1976. The lines of lyrics and the other parts of music James pays attention to were performed in this order and belong to these Queen songs: Bohemian Rhapsody (Rock Part) and Ogre Battle (the thunderous opening), White Queen (the softer, quiet little number), Flick of the Wrist, and in the medley, You’re My Best Friend, Bohemian Rhapsody (Ballad) and The March of the Black Queen.


End file.
